Introduction to Volume 2, Issue 1
I take great pleasure in welcoming you to Volume 2, Issue 1 of the Texas Journal of Distance Learning. In this issue, you will find four new articles that provide a small glimpse into the wide variety of distance learning initiatives at educational institutions throughout Texas. In the first article, Scott Walker discusses his experiences with the Distance Education Learning Environments Survey (DELES), an instrument for higher education courses delivered via distance that seeks to investigate relationships between student satisfaction and the nature of the distance learning environment. Chamberlain, Davis, and Kumar also deal with student satisfaction in their article that describes their work with hybrid courses, a very popular online learning option that is being used at numerous colleges and universities here in Texas and throughout the country. Gene Mueller, Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences and Education at Texas A&M University-Texarkana, offers an essay on the success of a new distance learning program that has been developed to help prepare and certify new teachers in east Texas. Completing the list of new articles is Cheryl Fielding's work on the use of videoconferencing technology to help provide instruction to Texas teachers who deal with a growing number of autistic students.
As Executive Editor of the TJDL, I would like to take this opportunity to offer my sincere appreciation to Dr. Philip Ruthstrom who served as managing editor through our first volume. Phil and I learned a great deal about the challenges of starting a new online journal, and more importantly, how to keep one operating at a high level of quality once it has been started. We wish him well as he moves on in exciting new directions. I am also delighted to introduce you to Dr. Mary Thompson who has agreed to serve as the new managing editor of the journal. Mary comes to the job with a great deal of experience in instructional technology and an eagerness to help the TJDL evolve and prosper and I invite you to contact her at mthompson3@uh.edu if you have any questions, comments or suggestions about the journal.
I would also like to thank several of my graduate students at the University of Houston, Heather Whitten, Nancy Barnhart, Arnecia Harris and Jeein Kang, who worked on the behind-the-scenes activities of the journal for the past several months. Their work may not be very visible to our readers but their focus on details dealing with the content of the journal, the article submission and review process and new guidelines for adding multimedia components to the site, have been extremely helpful and will help us expand the scope of the TJDL over the coming months. They also have come up with many good suggestions for adding features that will appeal not only to experienced educators, but also to other graduate students who are interested in online learning. So, if you know of students you think would be interested in the journal, please let them know about us. We hope they, like you, will find the journal to be a valuable resource in today's dynamic educational environment.